Kobayashi's hands were still broken, their fractures not yet healed—but at this moment, he seemed to have forgotten all about that. Instead, he treated the casts on his arms like blunt hammers, smashing them viciously into the enemy's face and chest.
As he struck, he screamed hysterically,
"Are you going to talk or not?! Hurry up and spill everything!"
One glance was enough for Torahachi Toumi to tell what state the boy was in.
He had been pushed into an emotional breakdown by the shock of real combat.
This was a common symptom among recruits experiencing the horrors of war for the first time.
"He's impressive… but in the end, he's still a rookie," Toumi shook her head and rushed forward to stop him.
Putting the enemy's life aside, if this went on any longer, Kobayashi's already fractured hands would have their recovery completely ruined!
Toumi dropped to her knees behind him and decisively grabbed both of his arms.
"Kobayashi-kun, calm down! The fight is already over!"
Being suddenly approached from behind and restrained, Kobayashi struggled instinctively.
After all, he was a boy—and physically two years older than Toumi. In his agitated state, he didn't immediately lose out in terms of raw strength.
Feeling challenged, Toumi reflexively slipped into combat mode as well, her body responding on instinct as she applied a grappling technique.
Before she could even complete the "guillotine" hold, the boy in front of her let out a sharp cry of pain.
Toumi snapped back to her senses at once.
Right. He's not the enemy.
Immediately after, she felt her body lifted by an invisible force and peeled off Kobayashi's back.
She didn't resist. Because in that brief, violent struggle, she realized that to suppress Kobayashi's fierce resistance, she had pressed both knees down onto his lower legs.
In that instant, she had clearly felt the sensation of something breaking.
Please let it just be the cast on his leg…
But judging from how violent Kobayashi's reaction had been, she was afraid she'd crushed his still-unhealed leg bone instead.
With both hands and both legs injured once again, Kobayashi didn't dare put any more force on them. Using his psychic ability to support himself, he turned to look at the girl behind him.
"Tora-hachi-Toumi?!"
His voice was a mix of helplessness, fear, and barely restrained anger.
"You… whose side are you on, exactly?"
"I'm terribly sorry!" The girl bowed deeply at once. "But you were hitting him so ferociously that I forgot, completely on reflex, that you were still injured!"
Kobayashi wanted nothing more than to press a hand to his forehead and sigh—but his hands had been injured again in the scuffle, so he had no choice but to give up.
"…How did you find this place?" he asked instead, forcing himself to calm down.
He had assumed that the first to find him would be the Security Department—or perhaps the enemy's reinforcements.
"I'm very good at tracking people," Toumi said with no small amount of pride.
Then, without bothering to ask about Kobayashi's detailed experience, she pointed bluntly at the man lying on the ground.
"This guy—he's the one who attacked you?"
"Yes. He's a sniper," Kobayashi nodded. "Very dangerous. Very troublesome."
In truth, the damage he had taken throughout the entire battle amounted to zero—but among all the enemies, this sniper had put the greatest pressure on him.
That was why, after capturing him, Kobayashi had lost control and beaten him so frantically.
As for interrogating him for information…
In reality, Kobayashi hadn't asked a single concrete question. He had just kept shouting for the enemy to "confess everything." At the end of the day, he simply didn't know how to interrogate someone properly.
More than anything, it had just been an excuse to vent his violence.
"Your interrogation method is wrong," Toumi pointed out seriously.
Recalling what he had just done, Kobayashi averted his gaze in shame—then immediately realized something was off and snapped his eyes back to her.
"Y-you… you know how to interrogate someone?"
Seeing the girl nod earnestly, Kobayashi felt an even deeper chill run through him.
This girl is dangerous in every possible sense!
Even knowing about Torahachi Toumi's tragic and miserable past didn't lessen his fear of her in the slightest.
"…Kobayashi Nana?"
The blonde, blue-eyed girl waved a hand in front of his face.
"Are you tired? Or hurt? Do you want me to take you to the hospital?"
At some point while he was spacing out, this beautiful yet terrifying girl had moved right up close!
Kobayashi instinctively floated backward, widening the distance between them.
"N-no. Not yet. I don't need to go to the hospital for now," he shook his head, grumbling internally—
I didn't get hurt at all during the fight, and now my old injuries are acting up because of you!
"There's still something I need to do," Kobayashi said after taking a deep breath and steadying himself.
He had already made up his mind—today, he would settle everything in one go. There was no way he was backing down now.
"That's why I asked earlier," Toumi said. "What kind of information do you want? I'll help you get it out of him."
Kobayashi fell silent for a moment before replying,
"Any information related to the 'Black Moon' Research Institute. I already found out from his accomplices that their employer is Black Moon—but I didn't have time to dig any deeper."
The girl nodded and walked over to the sniper sprawled on the ground, nudging him with her foot.
"Stop playing dead. He didn't hit you with lethal force—your injuries only look serious."
The man—his face mangled, blood pouring from his nose—finally opened his eyes.
Just as Toumi said, he looked beaten to a pulp, but his injuries weren't fatal.
Because Kobayashi's hands were injured—and because he instinctively recoiled from killing someone with his own hands—he had held back while beating him. Most of the damage had come from the hardened plaster of the casts.
The sniper hadn't resisted, letting a wounded, half-immobile boy pummel him at close range, because he was completely suppressed by Kobayashi's psychic power. Unable to move at all, he could only pretend to be unconscious.
But tricks like that were useless against someone who had clawed her way out of mountains of corpses and seas of blood.
Torahachi Toumi untied a pale-yellow ribbon from her wrist. One end wrapped around her hand; the other hung freely.
The moment Kobayashi saw the ribbon, he drifted even farther back.
In Toumi's hands, any strip-like object could become the sharpest rapier.
"You heard our conversation just now," she said flatly, staring down at the enemy. "So start talking. Unlike him, I'm an interrogation specialist. Resisting me is meaningless."
The leader of "Hunter" snorted coldly and ignored her.
If he weren't still pinned down by Kobayashi's psychic power, he probably would've turned his head away in open contempt.
Toumi showed neither anger nor pleasure.
The ribbon in her hand suddenly snapped taut—
And in the next instant, it shot forward like lightning.
(End of Chapter)